The Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network issued new rules Wednesday to force U.S. title insurance companies to identify the natural persons behind companies used to pay all cash for high-end residential real estate in the Borough of Manhattan in New York City and in Miami-Dade County, Florida.

The Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network said Tuesday that the owner of Caesars Palace casino in Las Vegas will pay an $8 million civil penalty for "willful and repeated violations" of the anti money-laundering provisions of the Bank Secrecy Act.

This month, Transparency International published its survey of the UK’s AML enforcement and confiscation systems, particularly in relation to Financial Action Task Force (FATF) defined “grand corruption” (bribe-taking or kickbacks, extortion, self-dealing, conflicts of interest, and embezzlement from the national treasuries).

Transaction monitoring -- the use of contemporaneous compliance analytics to proactively and reactively identify suspicious business arrangements and payments -- is the most important development in anti-corruption programs since third-party due diligence. Beware though: Transaction monitoring can also inadvertently increase legal risk.

CEO Hunt Burke (Image courtesy of Burke & Herbert Bank)Burke & Herbert Bank & Trust must develop a new top-to-bottom compliance program and hire people to run it under the terms of an order issued by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

The U.S. Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) defined the concept of a "culture of compliance" in a six-page advisory Monday that was aimed at senior management, leadership and owners of financial institutions subject to FinCEN's regulations.

The chief of U.S. Treasury's anti-money laundering unit said casinos must use all information at their disposal to uncover suspicious customer transactions, including information about their source of funds.

The threat of a possible Phase 3bis evaluation, leading to a public statement of non-compliance, is a sure sign that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Working Group has encountered a brick wall.